Wednesday, July 6, 2011

HYDERABAD: A Task Force team laid a trap and arrested four persons while they were trying to dispose of an antique bronze idol of goddess Lakshmi at SBI Officers' Colony in Moosrambagh on Tuesday night. However, their associate is absconding.

M Kamalanath Reddy, 39, S Peddi Raju, 36, B Jaganmohan Rao, 26, and M Bhaskar, 21 are friends. Last week, Madhu Chary, a native of Bhadrachalam, gave them an idol, claiming it to be an antique. They took it to Peddi Raju's brother's hotel. The Task Force caught them while trying to dispose of it for Rs10 lakh. The four and the idol were handed over to the Malakpet police. tnn

I found the tone of this article confusing -- it seems to be totally blowing off the discovery of the amber beads in close conjunction with a 4,000 year old Bronze age burial of a woman labeled a "farmer." I mean - HELLO! Amber was rare and expensive - it wasn't something that an ordinary farmer - or his wife - just had laying around. Norfolk was a loooonnnnnggggg way from the Baltic regions where amber came from 4,000 years ago. There's a bigger story here. Come on!

And what about the bone shoulder-blade "digging tool?" I would like to have read more explanation of this tool -- was it like others that have been uncovered in same period burials? In the region? Was it a "typical" tool for neolithic farmers?

The 4,000-year-old woman's skeleton found
by the Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological
Research Project (SHARP) last year.

And the woman -- which way was she facing? Was anything else found in the grave with her? In this photo, is that a stone pot, or a skull (?), close by her hip?

“It’s to protect the skeleton from them - not them from the skeleton,” said Mr Hatton.

SHARP - the Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project, which runs the dig - hopes to obtain grants to cover the £1,500 needed to carry out carbion dating and tests with radioactive isotopes needed to date the skeleton and reveal the woman’s origins.

The 2009 skeleton pre-dates the building of Seahenge, at nearby Holme-next-the-Sea, by several generations.

Southampton University student Cath Walker, who is researching flints found at Sedgeford for her PhD, said the primitive tools revealed yet more about the human history of the site.

“We’ve got hunter-gatherer communities moving through the landscape following their food sources,” she said. “This is a new chapter, pushing the history of the site back further.”

Remember that plaintive cry of Cast Away star Tom Hanks as his "Wilson" icon -- a Wilson brand basketball he gradually decked out into a sort of alter-ego and companion -- drifted away from Hanks' raft after his - oops! - it's lashings came loose while Hanks slept. This is an image of Wilson when he (it) was newly-created. Four years later, when Hanks decides to leave the island and either make it to safety or die on his jerry-rigged raft in the attempt, Wilson is much the worse for wear, including sporting a tuft of "hair" out of the top of the ball above the face, and the ball was discolored and partially collapsed. In fact, at that point in the narrative Wilson looked rather like...

this! OHMYGODDESS! It's Wilson - reincarnated! "Junior" is suitably smaller than Dad, being only 1.5 by 1.1 inches (37 by 27 mm), with eyes made out of shell. Archaeologists placed modern feathers into the holes around the face to reveal what they would've looked like in antiquity. CREDIT: Photo courtesy Ronald Powell/Chapter 27 Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology.

The image below shows Wilson's hair" sprouted out of the top of his head and Hanks' character is having a vehement discussion with Wilson as he rests on the stump of a coconut palm.

A recently discovered miniature clay head with eerie eyes may have been an effigy used by a shaman more than 1,000 years ago, researchers say.

The head, which was discovered near Ebbert Spring in Franklin Country, Penn., has shells for eyes and tiny holes across its top and sides that may have been used for feathers or hair. A cavity at the base of the neck indicates that it was likely mounted on a stick or wand.

"It might have been used in a ceremony by a shaman of some sort," said lead archaeologist Ronald Powell, of the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology. Shell is a symbolically important object among Native American cultures and Powell believes that the use of it for eyes, combined with feathers, add weight to the idea that the artifact had a shamanistic use.

He pointed out that viewing the eyes in the outdoor light leaves quite an impression.

"It does give kind of an eerie glow from the incised shell eyes — you have sort of a dusty evening light," Powell told LiveScience. "It would be kind of awestruck for whoever was being subjected to it."

Finding a precise date for the head is difficult, but based on pottery found nearby, Powell estimates it was created around A.D. 900.

Ebbert Spring has been occupied by humans for about 11,000 years, Powell said. The availability of water at the site attracted deer and they, in turn, attracted human hunters, suggesting the site was used during winter.

"It would be sort of a wintering type campsite, at least through the months of August and March probably," said Powell, who detailed his finding in the latest issue of the journal Pennsylvanian Archaeologist.

Enigmatic effigy?

Two researchers not affiliated with the dig told Live Science that it is an interesting artifact but one that is difficult to interpret. "It's a significant object , but it's a very rare object," said Kurt Carr, senior curator of archaeology at the State Museum of Pennsylvania, who pointed out that the iconography is similar to that used by Iroquois people who settled in northeast North America.

"Heads and faces are a characteristic of Iroquoian peoples — it seems to be part of their art motif if you will," he said. However "this doesn't seem to be Iroquoian; it's awfully far south."

Michael Stewart, an anthropology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, said that the head may date to more recent times.

Across the Northeast, "you tend to see them [effigy heads] most frequently after A.D. 1300 and much more as you get into late prehistoric times and when European colonists are encountering Native peoples."

Stewart cautions that more peer-reviewed information about the soil and artifacts at Ebbert Spring are needed before any conclusions can be made about the date and purpose of the head.

"Whether it was the personal property of a religious specialist like a shaman or whether it was the ornament or an object used by an individual within that community is something that (based on the evidence so far) I don't think we can say," Stewart noted.

Shell eyes

The key to answering questions about the head may be in the white shell eyes.

"If you look at what is being recorded historically amongst living native people during early historic times, shell plays a very special symbolic role," Stewart said. "You have shell beads being made by different peoples. You have an acknowledgment that the color white is symbolically important — it's the color of life ."

He said that it is interesting that whoever made the eyes used shell.

"It certainly drives home the point that whoever made or used this face, that it meant something very special, that it was symbolically loaded, that had meaning." [Yes, like Wilson in Cast Away].

Monday, July 4, 2011

From Barbara G. Walker's The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

Skadi

The Celto-Teutonic Goddess in her "Destroyer" aspect. Like the Greek Persephone, "Destroyer," she was Queen of the Shades, Mother Death. Her name was the root of Gothic skadus, Old English sceadu, "shadow, shade." She was the Shadow into which all the gods went at doomsday, called Gotterdammerung, or Going-Into-the-Shadow-of-the-Gods.(1) As Scotia, she was the Dark Goddess - like Black Kali, the Caillech - after whom Scotland was named.(2)

Like Kali, Skadi had to be propitiated each year with an outpouring of male blood in primitive sacrificial rites. Her annual victim was assimilated to the god Loki, who became a "savior" by fertilizing Skadi with his blood. Loki's genitals were attached by a rope to a goat, and a tug-of-war ensued, until Loki's flesh gave way and he fell into Skadi's lap, thus bathing her loins in his blood. The gods watched anxiously to see if Skadi smiled; and when she did, it means spring could return once more to the land.(3)

Similar blood-rites were practiced all over the ancient world, when men sought godhood by giving their blood to the Goddess, before animal sacrifices replaced human ones, and even afterward. It was not uncommon for priestesses representing the Goddess to bathe in sacrificial blood, like the women who sacrificed Apis the bull-god in Egypt, hoisting their skirts as they dismembered him so his spurting blood would quicken their wombs.(4) Like many death-goddess figures, Skadi collected the penises of her castrated heroes, and in this character she was named Mornir, "troll-woman."(5)

Remnants of the bloody sacrifice of Loki and the goat could still be found in Norway and Sweden in the late 17th century. Churchmen vainly denounced the masquerades, sexual promiscuity, and "goat games" associated with Easter and other religious festivals.(6)

Skadi was a dark twin of Freya, therefore virtually identical with the underground Goddess Hel. She was once all the Earth, birth-giver and devourer of her children. The entire land mass of Scandinavia was named after her. Originally, it was Scadin-auja, the land of Skadi.(7)

A variation of her name, Skuld, was given to the third of the three Fates, or Norns, in the role of destroying Crone. Naturally she became the patroness of witches, whose activities came to be called "skulduggery."

To the Celts, she was Scatha or Scath. Her underground realm of the dead was "the Land of Scath." Like Persephone's underworld within seven loops of the Styx, the Land of Scath was a city of seven walls.(8) It was variously located under the earth, or in heaven, or far away over the sea on a western island, the land of "Sky." Cu Chulainn and other Celtic heroes learned magic skill in martial arts from a visit to Queen Scatha's island of Skye. She kept the hero for a "year and a day," the usual mythic image of the old 13-month lunar year with its intercalary day. When she had taught a man all she knew, she sent him back to earth a fey man, set apart and sacer, fated to do great deeds and die a sacrificial death.(9) The legend suggests that the real island of Skye was a cult center of the Goddess, and warriors went there to be initiated into their heroic profession.

Skadi is still invoked by place named in Sweden, such as Skadave (Skadi's temple) and Skadalungr (Skadi's grove).(10)

Scotia
Latin form of the "Dark Aphrodite" after whom Scotland was named; in her native land she was the Death-goddess Scatha, or Skadi.(1) She was the mother of Caledonia; some said she was identical with the Caillech, or Crone, who created the world.

Notes:

1. Graves, G.M. 1, 72.

Caillech
Old Celtic name for Kali-the-Crone, the Great Goddess in her Destroyer aspect. Like Kali, the Caillech was a black Mother who founded many races of people and outlived many husbands. She was also a creatress. She made the world, building mountain ranges of stones that dropped from her apron.(1)

Scotland was once called Caledonia: the land given by Kali, or Cale, or the Caillech. "Scotland" came from Scotia, the same Goddess, known to Romans as a "dark Aphrodite"; to Celts as Scatha or Scyth; and to Scandinavians as Skadi.(2)

Like the Hindus' destroying Kalika, the Caillech was known as a spirit of disease. One manifestation of her was a famous idol of carved and painted wood, kept by an old family in County Cork, and described as the Goddess of Smallpox. As diseased persons in India sacrificed to the appropriate incarnation of the Kalika, so in Ireland those afflicted by smallpox sacrified sheep to this image.(3) It can hardly be doubted that Kalika and Caillech were the same word.

According to various interpretations, caillech meant either an old woman, or a hag, or a nun, or a "veiled one."(4) This last apparently referred to the Goddess's most mysterious manifestation as the future, Fate, and Death - ever veiled from the sight of men, since no man could know the manner of his own death.

In medieval legend the Caillech became the Black Queen who ruled a western paradise in the Indies, where men were used in Amazonian fashion for breeding purposes only, then slain. Spaniards called her Califa, whose territory was rich in gold, silver, and gems. Spanish explorers later gave her name to their newly discovered paradise on the Pacific shore of North America, which is how the state of California came to be named after Kali.

In the present century, Irish and Scottish descendants of the Celtic "creatress" still use the word caillech as a synonym for "old woman." (5)

I am pretty sure I read some time ago that Scatha/Scotia was closely associated with the practice of finger divination by the Celts. I will see if I can find my notes - I know they're on one of my three computers (geez!)

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About Me

I'm one of the founders of Goddesschess, which went online May 6, 1999. I earned an under-graduate degree in history and economics going to college part-time nights, weekends and summer school while working full-time, and went on to earn a post-graduate degree (J.D.) I love the challenge of research, and spend my spare time reading and writing about my favorite subjects, travelling and working in my gardens. My family and my friends are most important in my life. For the second half of my life, I'm focusing on "doable" things to help local chess initiatives, starting in my own home town. And I'm experiencing a sort of personal "Renaissance" that is leaving me rather breathless...